Let us now compare Ireland as a whole with the Scotch Highlands. The language of both is still, as for fifteen hundred years, practically the same. The inhabitants are of closely-allied race, in part identical, and for many centuries a constant communication was kept up between both countries. The folk-lore is partly alike, partly unlike. The similarity is occasionally very great. There are entire tales which are all but identical as told on both sides of the sea. There is identity of phrases and sentences. In Campbell’s version of the “far-travelled tale,” “The Battle of the Birds,” occurs a striking phrase, in which the raven is said to have carried a man “over seven benns and seven glens and seven mountain moors.” Nearly the same phrase occurs in Kennedy’s version—“seven mountains (benns), seven glens and seven moors,” which is the more surprising, as this story had passed, one does not know how long before, from its Gaelic into its English dress. Compare the phrase from “Morraha” in the present volume—“he sat down and gave a groan and the chair broke in pieces”—with Campbell’s “The King of Assaroe”—“his heart was so heavy the chair broke under him.” Many other examples could be given. We have before our eyes, so far as Irish and Scotch folk-lore are similar, an example of how two branches of a race originally so closely united as almost to form one, have for some hundreds of years drifted or been forced apart, the process being thus unfolded to us in the full light of history by which a body of folk-lore, originally one, has separated into divisions showing distinct characteristics, while it retains the strongest tokens of its original unity.
But it seems as if there was a large amount of folk-literature in each country which the other never possessed. To this I shall come presently, after I have first brought forward a comparison with German folk-lore. But before attempting that, it is desirable first to offer a few remarks on the style of the stories in this volume.
It will, I hope, be observed that the style is not uniform, but that it differs considerably from one story to another, and not so much in accordance with the narrator as with what he narrates. I must of course partially except the case of P. Minahan, whose individuality is stamped on everything that comes from him; but this is not so with the other narrators. If “The Gloss Gavlen” be compared with the only other tale of M’Ginty’s, “The King who had Twelve Sons,” it will be seen that the style of the two is quite distinct, the first being noticeable for a certain archaic simplicity of which there is no trace in the other. Again, the style of “Bioultach” is surely quite different from that of T. Davis’s other contribution, “The Story,” in “Morraha,” while the opening of the latter from M’Grale is easily distinguishable from that of “The Little Girl who got the better of the Gentleman,” or “Gilla of the Enchantments.” Even Minahan varies with his subject, as will appear from a comparison of “The Woman who went to Hell” with “The Champion of the Red Belt.” It seems from this as if some of the tales had a certain indestructibility of style, an original colour which passed unaltered through the minds of perhaps generations of reciters, this colour being determined at first by the character of the subject. In general, the tales of fierce fighting champions, of the more terrible monsters, sorcerers and the like, have a certain fierceness, if one may use the word, of style; while those of more domestic incident are told with quietness and tenderness.